Superconducting wires or tapes have been developed based upon high temperature superconducting (HTc or HTS) materials which may have critical temperatures TC above 77 K, facilitating their use in cryogenic systems cooled by liquid nitrogen. In particular, superconducting tapes have been developed in which a layer of superconducting material is integrated into a stack of conductive and/or non-conductive layers that form the tape.
When used to conduct alternating current (AC) a superconducting tape generates a magnetic field along the edges of the superconducting tape. When the polarity of current in the superconducting tape switches with the AC signal, magnetic flux switches polarity and exhibits a hysteretic behavior (Hp), which contributes to an energy loss that is often termed “AC loss.” The AC loss depends upon the aspect ratio of the superconducting tape in which the aspect ratio is defined as the thickness of the superconducting layer divided by the width of the superconducting tape. In particular, as the aspect ratio decreases, the magnetic hysteresis and AC loss increases. A typical superconducting tape may have a width of about 1 cm and superconducting layer thickness of about 1 μm, thereby exhibiting an extremely low aspect ratio. Although attempts have been made to improve the aspect ratio by etching superconductor tape to form narrower superconducting lines, such processes may not be ideally suited to high volume manufacturing. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present improvements are needed.